Matthew Dennis

Overview

I am Doctoral Researcher on the joint-PhD programme of the universities of Warwick (UK) and Monash (Australia), specialising in philosophical accounts of character-development and self-cultivation. My current work draws on French and German philosophy, exploring how these traditions have the resources to contribute to debates in Anglophone virtue ethics. I am also interested in traditional philosophical topics that bear upon practical reasoning, including love, desire, freedom, and the nature of human flourishing.

I have recently co-edited a volume of essays on self-cultivation, which will be published by Routledge in 2018, and prior to this was the principle investigator for a two-year research project on this topic. My essay on philosophical self-cultivation was the winner of the ASCP Postgraduate Essay Prize 2017, and was subsequently published in Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy. I have a BA (Sussex) and MA (Warwick) in philosophy, and am currently writing on the potential of online technologies for character development.

Teaching

Course Leader: 'Philosophies of Self-Formation: Technologies of the Self for the 21st Century' (5 x graduate-level lectures), MSCP, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne, Australia. Feb 2017.

Lecture: 'Nietzsche's Ethics', Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick. 3rd March 2015.

Lecture: 'Revising the Presocratics', Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick. 28th May 2013.

I have also led seminars for the following modules: 'Philosophy, Happiness, and the Good Life', Deakin University (1 term; undergraduate, 2016); 'Nietzsche in Context', University of Warwick (1 term; undergraduate, 2015); ‘Introduction to Ancient Philosophy', University of Warwick (3 terms; undergraduate, 2012–13); ‘Aesthetics’, Goldsmiths College, University of London (2 terms; postgraduate, 2009–10); ‘Critical Studies’, Goldsmiths College, University of London (2 terms; undergraduate, 2008–09).

Reading group co-organiser: ‘Kant’s Practical Philosophy: From the Second Critique to the Anthropology’, Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick (with B. Berger and I. Schumski). May–June 2014.

Extra-Curricular Activities

Between my BA in philosophy at University of Sussex and my MA in philosophy at University of Warwick, I worked as a London-based art writer and critic, including writing a joint catalogue essay for the Whitstable Biennale with Prof. Nina Power (funded by Arts Council England).